N.H. Critics Target Federal Voc.-Ed. Funds

Conservative groups in New Hampshire are lobbying state officials to
return $13 million in federal funds the state received under an effort
to help ease students into the workplace.

The school-to-work program is a federal erosion of state autonomy,
the groups contend, and represents an attempt by the federal government
to impose controls on the local job market.

Officials in several of the 18 other states that receive grants
under the School-to-Work Opportunities ACT of 1994 have heard similar
complaints and predict that the program may become a national issue for
conservative critics of federal education policy.

The emerging controversy recalls the efforts of conservatives to
derail outcomes-based-education reforms in many states, as well as
opposition to the Goals 2000: Educate America Act.

Indeed, officials in several states say that some of the same people
who opposed OBE have begun to question the propriety of accepting the
school-to-work money, which will go to local programs that provide
school-based and work-based learning that can lead to a high school
diploma, a skills certificate, or a postsecondary credential.

While the most vocal critics of the federal program to date have
surfaced in New Hampshire, education officials in several Midwest
states said privately that they have begun to hear similar concerns
from conservatives.

They speculate that efforts to undermine the program have been
targeted at New Hampshire and Iowa to raise the issue in states with
crucial presidential primaries or caucuses early next year.

Local Control at Issue

In New Hampshire, some state officials say they are hard put to make
sense of the attacks on a program designed to help schools and
employers cooperate to ease the transition from the classroom to the
worksite.

"Quite honestly, I'm not up on the reasons why it's generating these
concerns," said Ray Worden, the head of the New Hampshire Job Training
Council.

Representatives of the state affiliate of the Christian Coalition
and the Granite State Taxpayers met last month with Mr. Worden to argue
that accepting the school-to-work grant would, in effect, allow the
federal government to usurp local control of education.

That position appears to have strong support among some key state
lawmakers, who say Gov. Stephen Merrill, a Republican, should have
rejected the funds.

"We can do fine with our own resources," said Sen. David Wheeler, an
opponent of the program. "This is nationalization of education."

Critics note that Gov. Merrill rejected Goals 2000 grants because he
said they fostered federal intrusion into state decisionmaking.

And they say the school-to-work program requires states to impose
skills standards on prospective workers. However, while the Goals 2000
law created a panel that will set national skills standards in various
occupational areas, they are to be voluntary, and the school-to-work
law does not require states to use them.

Jim Rivers, the governor's spokesman, said that Mr. Merrill was
judging each program on its own merits. "It shows we're not taking an
ideological position on these federal issues," he said.

National Attention

The school-to-work program is beginning to draw the attention of
conservative activists nationwide.

In a syndicated column published this month in The Washington
Times, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly linked the
school-to-work law with outcomes-based education, arguing that both are
part of an effort by federal lawmakers to impose national education
standards on state and local governments.

"When you combine this workforce system with the schools' obvious
failure to teach children to read and the dumbing-down process called
'outcomes-based education,' the result will be a third-world education
to accustom Americans to third-world wages," she wrote.

An article posted on the Eagle Forum World Wide Web page on the
Internet, written by Dennis L. Cuddy, who is identified as a former
U.S. Department of Education employee, attacks a pending
vocational-training bill as part of a plan "by which the education
establishment hopes to achieve interlocking control over both the
public school system and the nation's economy."

The Republican-drafted bill, known as the CAREERS Act, would replace
some 100 job-training and vocational-education programs with block
grants to states. The House overwhelmingly approved the bill last month
with bipartisan support. (See Education Week, Sept. 27, 1995.)

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